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Adoption and Children Act 2002 (Consequential Amendment to Statutory Adoption Pay) Order 2006

I thank noble Lords for their general support. I shall deal with the specific points raised. We dealt in great detail with the question of whether we could pass some of the administrative costs back to the Inland Revenue. We discovered that there were no very significant savings to the employer, and that there would be enormously heavy costs to the Revenue and Customs. We reckoned that that would take up to £75 million in set-up costs and£50 million in annual running costs. That makes perfect sense, because effectively all the information would have to be passed backwards and forwards between the Revenue and the company, which would add a lot of cost to the system and save very little for the individual business. Regarding further discussions with the industry, we have listened to the concerns of business. We have recently completed a public consultation on the details of the scheme. A Government response to that will be issued in due course, which will lead to the development of further regulations. The regulations show that we have carefully consulted industry throughout on the easiest way to do this, and we will continue to do so. I agree with the noble Lord that guidance and clarity are essential. We will ensure that small businesses have all the information and guidance they need so there is a clear statement of what maternity rights, and so on, are. We have always sought to balance the giving of further rights with spending a lot of time thinking how we can reduce the cost of that to business. You can see from the notification periods that we have taken that very seriously. On that basis, I commend these regulations. On Question, Motion agreed to.